Cogs Army Box Review
With the release of the Cogs AT-43 gained its 5th playable faction. They have few numbers but numerous and accurate weaponry that will punish any enemy out in the open at any range. They are also able to summon type I AFVs to the battlefield and are the only faction to allow more than one hero per unit.
The army box comes with a 2000 point army that is fully playable. Rackham has done a good job picking the units for it as it gives a new player a taste of all the varying unit types.
Box Contents
- C-Naps Hero box
- 4 Warmongers
- 3 Sharpshooters
- 1 Prowler
- 1 Vandal
This comes out to exactly 2000 points when all models are used and puts together a decently competitive force. The C-Naps are a great choice for heroes as they are a combination of all of the other hero types. You get a medic, summoner and company commander, all of which are useful.
Warmongers and sharpshooters are the staple type 1 and 2 units of the Cogs so there are no surprises here. This lets you make a choice of which attachment box to get for both units later in order to round out a max size unit. A great choice if you ask me because new players won’t know what play style they prefer until they get a few games under their belt.
The Prowler is a great type 1 AFV and you will want to pick up another one of these guys if you plan on doing any summoning. They’re great and really start to shine when playing a T-Regulator force with deflector shields.
Finally we have the Vandal, the heavy hitting monster of the cogs. This type III AFV has the nastiest mortar in the game and its Quantum Cannon is deadly as well. I’m not totally crazy about using type III’s in a 2000 point game, but this is how all the army boxes are shaping up.
My general strategy when playing with the starter set exclusively is to add the G09 and G36 to the sharpshooters creating a long range heavy hitter while adding the G45 to the warmongers. This is because I wouldn’t want my company commander in a unit without a medic and I want them to be as far away from the action as possible to avoid taking early hits. All in all its a great starter package and provides multiple ways of branching out into different lists. The units I would get along side this box to round out a force would be.
- Warmonger jammer attachment
- Sharpshooter sniper attachment
- 1 Prowler
- T-Regulator Hero box
This gives a couple of list options without the Vandal at 2k points and gets you up to 3k points for some lists. I’m just getting my feet wet with cogs but there should be some army lists coming shortly.
I noticed you have no 3k lists, so i (who have a strong 3k army of COGS, UNA, and Therians) want to let you in on my list. i based it off of the armybox and its diverse enough to handle just about any mission.
C-Naps
PLATOON 1
2 Hunters (C-naps G36)
8 Warmongers (C-Naps G45+ Combat Engineer+ 3 Jammers)
4 Sharp Shooters (C-Naps G09+ Medic)
1 Vandal
1 Prowler
PLATOON 2
3 Gunmen
2 Sharpshooter Sniper Team
The hunter’s led by the G36 and their rocket jump ability can roam about the field effectively killing anything with 12 or less armor in one salvo due to its 9 rockets. That and with the hero’s 4 shots of quantum rifle fire to clean up any surving infantry, this unit will be clutch. But dont be afraid to to let loose on high armored targets like tiamat, you may need to roll 6′s to damage but at 2 damage per hit and 9 dice on your side, the odds are in your favor of killing her outright.
The warmongers unit is the ultimate all purpose unit, especially with G45. With 15 quantum pistol shots, 3 double damaging rockets, and 6 jammer blasts, all with rerolls, this unit has the ability to walk onto the table and eliminate and entire infantry unit, an entire unit of battlesuits and ANY type 2 AFV from any army in ONE turn. Though that would be the best outcome, odds are you would just seriously cripple those three aformentioned units, and thats just terrible isn’t it? And the fact that G45 is a medic helps keep this team around (Not to mention that the unit has quantum swords, 14 attacks with a reroll means that if you must run in and fight hand to hand, this unit can do that too).
The Sharpshooter unit with G09 and the medic will be your command unit, meant to hide away and pop out to blast infantry to hell from distance, just be sure to not let any AFV’s get near them, and if you do, make sure the warmongers can see those AFV’s.
The Vandal is your heavy hitter, just point and shoot, ground entire units of infantry with its mortar and rip through AFV’s with its cannon (heaven help those infantry unlucky enough to be shot with that thing). That and with it’s objective controlling abilty coupled with its free repair once per activation, just park this monster where you want and keep shooting until the Karmans come home…to die.
The Prowler is your fast, mostly anti-infantry strike vehicle, mainly meant to sit in reserve to then shoot out of a neutral access zone to get to those pesky snipers, or pesky battle suits and crush em. It can harrass an AFV if you need it to, but dont be surprised when it goes down (and it will), it’s job is to just go suicidal and do as much as possible before biting it.
The 3 Gunmen are of course meant to cut down enemy soldiers…with a vengeance. 12 shots with a reroll will almost definately cause a morale check with any sized infantry unit (if it doesn’t kill them outright of course). This ability coupled with stealth detection (sorry grim golems) and rocket jump, you’ll be able to hop about to get to those soft bodies just as fast as you need to.
And now we have the two man Sniper team, who (as long as they dont move, and they wont have to often with their 11 accuracy) benfeit from both from 3+ cover saves and 4 sniper shots (cover wont save the enemy). These two are perfect for taking out high priority targets in crowds of infantry (i.e. sargeants, medics, special weapons etc.) and entire units of battle suits, the only thing stopping their shots would be the target’s armor, and no infantry can claim their safety from these guys.
So there you have it. Due to the fact im posting this like almost two years after this article i’ll be super glad to know some one who loves this game like i do would have read this.
Curious – how do you get 4 Sharpshooters plus a medic?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that each Cog hero/officer takes up an infantry spot when building a platoon so this list’s 1st platoon is made of 2 AFV choices and 6 infantry choices instead of the rules 2 AFV choices and 3 infantry choices. Or am I wrong about how Cogs pick hero/officers?
The G – line of Heroes are medics so this is probably what the + medic refers to in the above army list.
@Horus: Cogs heroes can join an infantry unit, or form a unit unto themselves. So the list above should be fine.
Thanks Cthulhu. I was thinking about this yesterday and re-read some sections from the Cog book. You can either buy Cog hero/officers as independants, meaning that they DO take up an infantry selection, or with a unit which DOES NOT because they are considered to be part of that unit (and you add the hero/officers points to the cost of the unit). Not super clear in the book and we’ve been playing them wrong in my group so now I have to re-do all my Cog army lists (I’ll put some up here after I get them re-worked).
One thing we cant agree on in my group is how to handle shooting at a Cog unit with 11 armor, but with a leader that has 6 or 7 armor. I sort of think that since the regular troops will sacrifice themselves 1st anyway tests should be made against their armor (whether higher or lower), but everyone else thinks we have to divide hits equally across the group and then roll against armor (which would result in troops dying to protect my leader from attacks that probably wouldnt kill them). Anyone have an opinion?
@Horus: Yeah, the Cogs heroes are pretty flexible it seems. I should be getting my army in the mail in a few days – excited to start using them.
That’s an interesting situation with the armor tests. Perhaps this paragraph from pg 77 of the rulebook will help:
“So a hero never suffers any impacts or damage tests as long as there are other fighters in his unit. Even if these fighters are completely hidden, they receive the impacts and suffer the damage tests instead of the hero. So the hero can only be eliminated if he is the sole survivor of his unit.”
It seems to me that only the regular fighters’ armor would be used until the hero is the last man standing. In the case of a unit including multiple heroes, or including only heroes, the Cogs books states that only the highest ranking hero is treated as such – the other heroes are treated as regular soldiers.
I’m just guessing, though. Posting at this forum would probably be your best bet: http://at-43.understairs.nl/forum/
Yeah you’re correct in that you wouldn’t use the hero’s armor until all the other fighters are killed. You may not allocate hits as well to any hero until there are no more models in his unit left. This means that the hero also may not be killed by the same attack that kills the remaining members of his unit. For this reason a cogs unit with the 3 medic G class heroes is extremely difficult to kill as you’re essentially limited to killing at most 1 member of the team in the first attack you make (kill 4 guys, they heal 3).
hey guys if you want a larger community to talk about this and all the other armies, go to:
http://at-43.understairs.nl/forum/index.php
i post there all the time and we usually have every little rule down pat.
Plus im a COG lover and i play around with all of their crazy army builds.
come join me!
and yeah my list is totally legal with a few mistake of abilities, but oh well.
Thanks for the quote from the rulebook Cthulhu, I figured I was right but I hadnt found the exact section I needed to push my point.
Ok, so here are a couple re-worked lists I came up with. As a disclaimer, since the forces I’ve used before didnt follow the correct rules for Cog hero/officers these havent exactly been tested yet. The lists are also based on what Cog units i could get (which didnt include the army box). We usually play 1,000 or 1,500 point games so I came up with a bunch of smaller variants, but I’ll only list a couple here. Almost everything that I’ve worked up follows the standard Cog pattern unless otherwise noted.
*1,000 pts*
- 1 unit of 6 Warmongers (including either CNaps 09 or TReg 09 as company commander and +2 extra soldiers) . . . 465pts
- 1 unit of 3 Gunmen (including AVol 45, although you could substitute him with AVol 36 or CNaps 36) . . . 535pts
A small compact and powerful force, though lacking in anti-AFV weapons.
*1,000 pts*
- 1 unit of 4 Warmongers (including GNo 09 as commander, and bringing his medic ability) . . . 360pts
- 1 unit of 2 Hunters . . . 275pts
- 1 unit of 3 Gunmen . . . 325pts
This was the only way I could find to put together a unit of Hunters and Gunmen into one force at 1,000 pts. Unfortunately I cant find a use for the left over 40 pts, but I dont think it needs it.
*TRegulator 1,000 pts*
- 1 Prowler AFV . . . 250pts
- 1 Prowler AFV . . . 250pts
- 1 unit 2 Hunters (including TReg 09 as commander, and TReg 27 for his forcefield ability that lets you choose hit locations on your AFVs and his cheap cost) . . . 500pts
I like this one a lot, the TReg ability lets your units run and shoot in the same turn, and Cog AFV’s auto-repair along with getting to choose hit locations makes them hard to kill. You could substitute a group of 4 Warmongers for the Hunter unit (at -50 pts) but I think the Hunters are a better choice.
*2,000 pts*
- 1 unit of 11 Warmongers (including GNo 09 as commander, GNo 27, GNo 45 for 3 medics, and +3 extra soldiers) . . . 1,075pts
- 1 unit of 2 Hunters (including TReg 45) . . . 385pts
- 1 unit of 3 Gunmen (including AVol 45, or you could substitute AVol 36 or CNaps 36) . . . 535 pts
One scary Warmonger unit that wont die easily can capture objectives and draw enemy fire while your Hunters and Gunmen kill everything else. This really shows why I think the standard Cog Company pattern is best, you can have all the advantages of each faction spread across your army where they will work best, without that faction’s disadvantage.
*2,000 pts*
- 1 unit of 4 Warmongers (including TReg 27 – so good for only 95pts) . . . 320pts
- 1 Unit of 6 Gunmen (including AVol 18 as commander and +3 extra soldiers) . . . 890pts
- 1 Unit of 4 Hunters (including CNaps 36 or AVol 36 and +2 extra soldiers) . . . 785pts
This started as a way to build a standard pattern Cog force with AVol 18 as leader, and turned into a monster of elite infantry units. I really want to try this one out.
I did come up with about 5 other lists, including 1,500′s, but a lot of them are just taking a 1,000 pt force and adding 2 Prowlers or an 8 man Warmonger squad (whichever fits in the company pattern). No, i dont use the Vandal in these and dont have one, but I dont really like the uber powerful AFVs in the game anyway, I’ve always been more infantry focused and the Cogs have such great infantry that I want to use them instead.